1 Replies - 1306 Views - Last Post: 22 April 2014 - 04:21 PM

Build and Compile

Posted 22 April 2014 - 04:00 PM

I got these quotes from a discussion board:

"Building" is a fairly general term, and it can refer to anything that is needed to go from editable
source material (source code, scripts, raw data files, etc.) to a shippable software product.
Building can (and usually does)involve several steps, such as pre-processing, compiling, linking, converting data files, running automated tests, packaging, etc.

"Compiling" is more specific, and almost invariably refers to a process that takes source code as its input, and outputs something runnable, typically machine code for either a physical or virtual machine, or source code in a different language.

I understand the difference between Building and Compiling above.

My questions are, please:

1) The building mentioned in the quote, this is irrespective of language, correct?

2) Does the Build option in Visual Studio do all these things?

3) For a single project solution in Visual Studio the Debug and Build are virtually the same.

Related to the Debug folder what are Debug symbols? For the Release folder what is optimization?

Replies To: Build and Compile

Re: Build and Compile

Posted 22 April 2014 - 04:21 PM

Quote

1) The building mentioned in the quote, this is irrespective of language, correct?

Sort of, but not all languages need to be built or compiled. There are also interpreted languages. There are even interpreted languages that get compiled to something else. For example, Javascript is an interpreted language, you do not build and compile your Javascript code, you just write it in a web page. But the Chrome browser will compile the Javascript behind the scenes before it executes the code, so that the compiled code will execute faster than if the code was just interpreted.

Quote

2) Does the Build option in Visual Studio do all these things?

Pressing the Build button in Visual Studio does some but not all of what is listed. For example, building a project will not automatically run tests. But a company's "build process" would include testing.